"The 120 Days of Sodom"
PART THE FORTH

THE 150 MURDEROUS PASSIONS, OR THOSE BELONGING TO THE FORTH CLASS, COMPOSING THE TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS OF FEBRUARY SPENT IN HEARING THE NARRATIONS OF MADAME DESGRANGES; INTERSPERSED AMONGST WHICH ARE THE SCANDALOUS DOINGS AT THE CHATEAU DURING THAT MONTH; ALL BEING SET DOWN IN THE FORM OF A JOURNAL.
(DRAFT)

THE 1ST OF FEBRUARY. 1. He used to enjoy amusing himself with a beggarwoman who had not had a bit to eat in three days, as his second passion is to leave a woman to die of hunger in a dungeon; he keeps a close watch upon her and frigs himself while examining her, but does not discharge until the day she perishes.

2. He maintains her in a prison cell, toying with her for a long season, gradually diminishing her daily portion of food; beforehand, he has her shit, and eats her turd upon a platter.

3. He formerly liked to suck the mouth and swallow its saliva; in recent days he has developed the passion of immuring a woman in a dungeon with food to last no more than a fortnight; on the thirtieth day, he enters her prison and frigs himself upon the corpse.

4. First, he would have her piss, then he would slowly destroy her by preventing her from drinking although feeding her all she wanted to eat.

5. He would flog, then later kill the woman by depriving her of sleep.

THE 2ND. 6. His first passion was to have her shit into his mouth, and he would eat it as it emerged; nowadays he feeds her a diet of worthless bread and cheap wine. A month on this fare and she starves to death.

7. He was once a great cunt-fucker; now he gives the woman a venereal distemper by injection, but of such virulence she croaks in very short order.

8. As a youth, he was fond of receiving vomit in his mouth, now, by means of a certain decoction, he gives her a deathly fever which results in her speedy demise.

9. He was once wont to gather shit from assholes, presently injects an enema containing toxic ingredients dissolved in boiling water or aqua fortis.

10. Once a famous fustigator, today he binds a woman to a pivot upon which she uninterruptedly revolves until dead.

THE 3RD. 11. He used to like to slap a whore's face; as a mature man, he twists her head around until it faces backward. When so adjusted, one may simultaneously look at her face and at her buttocks.

12. Addicted to beastiality as a youngster, he now likes to have a girl depucelated by a stallion while he looks on. She ordinarily dies.

13. Once an ass-fucker, he now buries the girl up to her waist and maintains her thus till the lower half of her body rots.

14. Previously, he was wont to frig her clitoris, and he still does so, but more vigorously, employing one of his servants to keep at his work until the girl expires.

15. Gradually perfecting his passion over the years, a fustigator now flogs every part of a woman's body until she perishes.

THE 4TH. 16. His earlier passion was to squeeze the whore's neck, in later years he would tie the girl by the neck. Before her sits a somptuous meal, but to reach it she must strangle; otherwise she dies of hunger.

17. The same man who slew Duclos' sister and whose taste is to subject the flesh to a prolonged mauling, abuses the breasts and buttocks with such furious violence that his treatment of the whore proves fatal to her.

18. The man Martaine mentioned on the 20th of January, he who formerly adored bleeding women, now kills them by dint of repeated bloodlettings.

19. He whose passion in times past was to make a naked woman run until she dropped from exhaustion, in this age of unbridled libertinage shuts her up in a steaming bathhouse where she dies of asphyxiation.

20. He whom Duclos cited earlier, the gentleman who liked to be wrapped in swaddling clothes and fed whoreshit in a spoon rather than pap, swathes a girl so tightly in baby's blankets that he kills her.

THE 5TH. 21. His first passion is for beastiality, his second is to sew the girl into untanned donkey's skin, her head potruding; he feeds and cares for her until the animal skin shrinks and crushes her to death.

22. He of whom Martaine spoke on the 15th of January and who liked to hang a girl for amusement, currently amuses himself by hanging her by her feet until the blood rushing to her head kills her.

23. Duclos' libertine of the 27th of November who liked to besot his whore, today inserts a funnel into her mouth and floods her with liquids till she dies therefrom.

24. Once he was wont to mistreat nipples, but has progressed since then and now buckles a sort of small iron pot over each breast and lowers her over a stove; the iron heats, and she is allowed to perish thus in frighful pain.

25. His whole delight used to consist in watching a woman swim, but now he casts her into a pond and fishes her out half-drowned, then hangs her by the feet to encourage the water to drain out of her. Once she has returned to her senses, into the pond she goes again, and so on and so forth, till she gives up the ghost.

THE 6TH. 26. As a young man he used to kick a woman in the ass, tumbling her into a brazier, whence she would emerge before suffering excessively. He has lately refined this stunt, now obliges a girl to stand upright between two blazing fires: one cooks her in front, the other behind; and there she remains until the fat on her body melts.

27. In former times he would impede respiration by constricting the neck with his hands or by blocking the nose and mouth, but these days he deposits the whore between four mattresses and she suffocates.

"Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change."

Quotations

Philosophy in the budoir
"I am about to put foward some major ideas; they will be heard and pondered. If not all of them please, surely a few will; in some sort, then, I shall have contributed to the progress of our age, and shall be content."

"What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act? That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you...every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates."

"Certain souls seem hard because they are capable of strong feelings, and they sometimes go to rather extreme lengths; their apparent unconcern and cruelty are but ways, known only to themselves, of feeling more strongly than others."

The 120 Days of Sodom"If the objects who serve us feel ecstacy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired. The idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism."

"Any enjoyment is weakened when shared."

"No kind of sensation is keener and more active than that of pain; its impressions are unmistakable."

"Consider the problem from the point of view of evil, evil being almost always pleasure's true and major charm; considered thus, the crime must appear greater when perpetrated upon a being of your identical sort than when inflicted upon one which is not, and this once established, the delight automatically doubles."

"If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be."

"The degradation which characterizes the state into which you plunge him by punishing him pleases, amuses, and delights him. Deep down he enjoys having gone so far as to deserve being treated in such a way."

"Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil."

"There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship."

"One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater."

"The pleasure of the senses is always regulated in accordance with the imagination. Man can aspire to felicity only by serving all the whims of his imagination."

"All universal moral principles are idle fantasies."

"Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite."

"It has, moreover, been proven that horror, nastiness, and the frightful are what give pleasure when one fornicates. Beauty is a simple thing; ugliness is the exceptional thing. And firey imaginations, no doubt, always prefer the extraordinary thing to the simple thing."

Aline et Valcour"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind."

"I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt; I have vanquished, I have uprooted, I have destroyed everything in my heart that might have interfered with my pleasure."

"We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves."

"Let us dare do violence to this unintelligible Nature, the better to master the art of enjoying her."

"Has not Nature proved, in giving us the strength necessary to submit them to our desires, that we have the right to do so?"

"It is not the opinions or the vices of private individuals that are harmful to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures."

"All creatures are born isolated and have no need of one another."

"Now I beg of you to tell me whether I must love a human being simply because he exists or resembles me and whether for those reasons alone I must suddenly prefer him to myself?"

"What lack of movement! What ice! Nothing stirs me, nothing excites me...I ask you, is this pleasure? What a difference on the other side! What tickling of my senses! What excitement in my organs!"

"Happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime."

"True felicity lies only in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them."